For those who think the City isn’t doing enough to support District 150 schools, take a look at the Neighborhood Impact Zone that was adopted as part of the Comprehensive Plan Tuesday night. This was a collaborative effort of the City, School District, neighbors surrounding Glen Oak School, and Tri-County Regional Planning, led by Third District Councilman Bob Manning and At-Large Councilman George Jacob. You can download a PDF of the zone/plan from the city’s website.
Here’s what I found most impressive: it includes measurement and follow-up. They’ve set incremental four-year goals for homeownership, crime reduction, neighborhood satisfaction, business retention, infrastructure improvement, community involvement, and education. They measured all these before the plan was adopted so they had a baseline from which to evaluate changes from year to year.
I hope that this type of planning effort is next applied to the area surrounding the new Harrison school, as it could certainly benefit from a focused effort to improve all the items on the measurement list.
Kudos to the City, which has really gone the extra mile to improve this area. Although I’m still disappointed that the school district felt it necessary to purchase (for $3.2 million) and tear down three blocks of housing stock, an historic school building, and local business structures in order to build a suburban-style mega-campus, I applaud the fact that at least they stayed centrally-located in the neighborhood and are willing to open up the campus and building as a community center.
Thank you to everyone who has been involved in this journey. Forgive me if I’m a little nervous because it’s a little too close to me. I’m in the zone. I guess I’m not the first person to get wigged out thinking about code enforcement ordering me to get my s***box of a house to Moss Avenue standards.
At the end of one of the neighborhood involvement meetings, I started to discuss it a little with George Jacob and he was very nice, but I hadn’t really developed my ideas or thoughts too clearly so I wasn’t really able to convey my anxiety about this new neighborhood change. Hopefully, here’s a chance to do that. I’m all for the project and I want to do my part, but if they get real aggressive on code enforcement (CE) in the dilapidated areas too quickly, I have the feeling that the policies may actually have the opposite effect and de-stabilize the hood. Let me try to explain why I feel this way and tell me if you agree
I mean, code enforcement has been very civil to me. Only one time was I a little taken aback with CE when I was written up for the remains of an empty 2 piece long john silver meal container in my alley and they wrote me up for it. So I came home to a big red NOTICE TO ABATE sticker on my front door.
I was like, “Wow. All this ‘trash’ would fit nicely into a shoe box and probably weighed 16 ounces. OK, whatever.” Call them, be professional, done. Sticker gone.
I talked to them briefly at one of the neighborhood meetings and one representative was very nice and even keeled, while another seemed like they really might have an edge and could have the ability to rip people a new one. In that area I’m sure you could just write and write and write and never end. Some houses would just look like one big red sticker all over the entire house.
It’s that worst case scenario that has me a little anxious.
I know my neighbors and I don’t have a great deal of discretionary income at the present time.
I realize that I’m in the zone, so I expect we will be getting a little more scrutiny than some. Just don’t go into Nazi mode.
If they get too aggressive too quickly, the city may drum these good homeowners out and replace them with a more transient buyer, incentivise the transients them to buy that house, live there the required 5 years to qualify for the funds like the $10,000 down payment government giveaway, build up some equity and then bolt and take the profit.
I agree that a city doesn’t want to make a 20-30 million investment and not do everything they can to protect it and foster it.
My little block has been real good and stable for the 20 years I’ve lived there. I can’t say the same if you go one block in any other direction. The area just is not very safe. A lot of stuff doesn’t make the newspaper police report. I’m thankful that our block has always been like a little bastion or defensive stronghold of owners. Even the landlords have been kind and attentive when problems arose.
I’m thinking about lifes inequities a little. I’ve watched one neighbor family over that score of years. The Dad is a good hard working man who works three jobs, day and night, to feed & raise their kids is always up outside at 5am scraping ice off the car windows to get to work… the Mom has a job with long days… Both parents are excellent providers with a beautiful family and strong roots to that block. Mom knows every bit of history there is to know about that area. Mom’s parents live across the street in the house that she was raised in and, to further increase stability, the grandparents also own the house next to them, across from me. Mom often gets her friends to rent directly across from her, too, so it’s a great little pod of people who look out for one another. On my block, I couldn’t ask for better neighbors.
That lovely family of 5 just missed qualifying for the approx. $50k income limit by a couple grand (yeah that is actually not too wealthy when you consider what they’ve got to provide for and try to save a little), so no financial or handyman help for gutters, roofs, etc. They get penalized because they’re trying to do things the right way.
Then you look out at a few neighbors who don’t bother to get up to scrape their windows and go to work, the one’s who have chosen even back when unemployment was low to not work. They are the ones getting the ‘extreme home makeover. The government comes in fixing everything up to the nines…that’s ok.
That’s OK. Some governments forms have always been like that, rewarding the slackers. And I’m ok with having low limits, so that not many people qualify. The giveaway gets massively more expensive very quickly if more people qualify.
People just have no way to pay for repairs of the type needed in a dilapidated area back and feed your kids, so potentially, we may lose those longtime homeowners who have stabilized this block for years and years and years.
I can relate to some of my neighbors financial chanllenges, I’ve got no funds to pump into a 120 year old house. I’ve never been rich enough to replace the gravity furnace, so January Ameren bill was close to $550.00 and I’m afraid to open February. I don’t have the money for to pay it yet anyway. I’ll manage to get back in their good graces before the power is cut.
Long hours at work mean that the house doesn’t get the proper TLC. Every time you turn around it another big repair. Your car is getting ready to take a big crap. You work all the time. You come home and just drop.
Some people might even be fearful to take a vacation to tend to some needed repairs because of uncertainty at work.
We aren’t living there in the shooting gallery by choice. We are sleeping at night with the windows open to save money, only to hear someone’s street urchins walking down the middle of the road running their mouth at well over 100 decibels like their fresh out of I-don’t-know-where. We just don’t have the discretionary income to move to a safer area and we can’t afford anything better. Moving and renting really isn’t an option. Money’s just too tight. With all the burdens and costs that the landlords must pass on to the consumer, rents are just ridiculously high.
Yeah the brochure about the new plan is real slick and good looking, and I’ve been to one or two of the meetings, and I’m all for it, but the so-called ‘neighborhood stabilization’ policy adopters had better ride herd on CE or they are just gonna have to find out they can’t get blood from a turnip.
Could too much CE be like the government providing incentive for my neighbors and I to just not hustle quite as much…maybe throttle back a little in order to qualify for the next round of all or nothing at all free home repair?
Will the government’s policy of neighborhood stabilization actually have an opposite effect? What has been your experience?
Again, thanks to all the folks that are involved in this effort & for reading my ramble.
Shay: Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns. Your essay has brought forward many topics for consideration and discussion. You have accurately detailed the many concerns and challenges faced by hardworking citizens who are a stabilizing influence in older neighborhoods whose resources for repairs may be modest. IT would be great to have some good ol’ fashioned barnraising type of activities to re-build our neighborhoods, many hands make for light work. I think that our community needs to think outside the box, especially in these difficult financial times. Thank you for having the courage to start the dialogue.
The ordinance was adopted May 13, 2008 so the Impact zone is good till May 13, 2010 in the Glen Oak zone. What a short time to do all of there plans. They then will move to the new Harrison school zone.
“I applaud the fact that at least they stayed centrally-located in the neighborhood and are willing to open up the campus and building as a community center.”
This could be a key to improving other neighborhoods in the city. Public Schools could be viewed as opportunities to provide resources that overlap and enhance our parks and libraries. If schools were designed to be community centers with recreation and library resources that are staffed by park district and library personnel, the opportunities for learning and recreation would serve local areas.
It may be a concept that goes back a century, when the city’s resources were not so remotely located that cars and time involving public transportation were necessary. People walked to the neighborhood stores, schools, park facilities. People were thinner, healthier, and learned from the diverse society of their neighborhoods.
Public schools, libraries and parks served most of the citizens who built the nation of the 1900’s. They became the pilots, researchers, engineers, teachers, journalists, entertainers, business people of their era and were the descendants of people from around the world.